For those of you not old enough to remember or know, you used to be able to order a whole house in a kit from Sears Roebuck. The Sears Roebuck catalog was THE place to order all your stuff...you could buy everything from housewares to clothing, tools to horse carriages, even opium. Yep, opium. You could also order a whole house as a do-it-yourself kit that would come shipped on a trailer and you'd just put the thing together and live like a king. So basically, the catalog was like a paper version of Amazon before the Internet existed.
Well, one of the Sears Roebuck kit homes is still standing in New Mexico! It was built in the early 1920s--it's nearly 100 years old!--and even though it's abandoned now, it's in relatively good shape.
The Sears archive website claims that 70,000 kit houses were sold between 1908 and 1940, in nearly 450 styles.
Note to self: if I'm ever in New Mexico, I gotta see this place! Looks super cool and creepy!
[KRQE]